17 May 2013

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - by Jeanette Winterson

As expected, I enjoyed this book, which is almost inevitable for me with a well-written biography. This one is, indeed, well written - the author has a very good way with words and I am unsurprised that she has been such a successful author. I found the first [more than] half of the book most interesting, as it catalogued her earlier life, growing up in a world very different from anything that I have experienced. In particular, her family were short of money, she was adopted and she gradually realized that she was a lesbian. She paints very strong pictures of her world and the characters in it, the most significant one being her mother, to whom she always refers as "Mrs. Winterson".

In the second half of the book, she fast-forwards to the recent past and discusses the search for her birth mother and ponders upon the nature of love and being adopted and how this affected her sexuality. I enjoyed this part of the book a little less, as I felt that I had been deprived of a significant part of the story in not hearing about the middle of her life.

The quality of writing was so good that I will very likely read more of the author's work in due course.

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